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After a long, chilly work week, Monkey says its “too f’in cold” in this place to be drinking a Torch Pilsner and a Thousand Smiles golden ale. So we drank up and got out!

It’s sometimes interesting how we find breweries. After a Google search of the Martinsville area when we arrived last Saturday, nothing showed up on the map. So obviously we hit everything in a 45 minute drive of the track until we struck up a conversation with this nice girl named Ashley while we were dining at Chop Stix. She proceeded to tell us about a local brewery that recently opened and not yet registered on Maps. After a little driving around the strip mall parking lot, sure enough this place does exist and serves up some awesome beer. Located in a former retail space with nothing more than a bar and some tables, we tried the Lawnmower american light and the Big Chair blonde ale from the selecton of 7 beers. We even had another 1st: I broke one of the cheap stools!

The last stop on our Martinsville mini-tour drags us 35 minutes out to a small town well south of the Virginia border. This old-west themed brewery is cladded with weathered red barn siding, a vintage western bar and even a piano at the entrance taking us back to the Wild West. A nice rounded menu set us up for a Wentworth wheat ale and Oktoberfest marzen which were delicious end to out tour before saddling-up and heading back to the ranch.

So the beertender greeted us with “welcome to hell”. If this is what hell is really like, we would have no issue ending up there for eternity. This quaint little brewery & tap room is located downtown amoungst unique shops & businesses and is truly small-batch offering up only five brews. Good thing two of them were right in our wheelhouse with a Booring Lager and a Raging Hoppils. The taproom reminds me of a cabin up in the woods with rustic siding and a rough-sawn bar top & tap handles. They even serve the beer in Mason jars. Very cool!

From fermenation vessel to pint glass – it doesn’t get any fresher than that. Most craft breweries now days brew in the back of house or offsite then hold their beers in traditional kegs but not this place. With five vessels lined up behind the bar and tap handles sticking out, we had them draw us a Caspian White blonde ale and River Dan Red irish red to wash down our order of Niko’s Nacho’s. We then followed up with a Draper White House IPA and a Meat pizza. Everything was awesome!

A 20 minute drive from the track and way out in the sticks! This tranquil brewery looks to be in the back yard of someones farm house. How the heck they got a permit or maybe they didn’t and just setup a tasting room in the barn to sell their home brews. Either way, this neat little brewery has some pretty good beer as well as live music. We drank the Coyote Call kolsch and the Spot On irish red while looking out over rolling hills and sunny skies.

Barbeque, beer and live music – it don’t get no better than that! This place is the 2nd of two breweries in this riverfront town that we stopped at on our way up to the Martinsville race. Started off with the Kolsch ale and the Oktoberfest before ordering up the pulled chicken and brisket sandwich from the Gypsy Whiskey food truck. Everything was pretty good and then realized it was too early to go back to the truck stop so we orderes up another Kolsch and a Trick or Treat blonde coffee ale to go along with our slice of bourbon brown sugar pie.

Housed in an old tabacco warehouse, this rustic industrial tasting room is fairly sizable with pinball machines, table shuffle board, cornhole and a former dock turned outdoor patio. Over a dozen beers that all look drinkable, we went with their Bohemian Lager and Kolsch – pretty tasty. So much so that we even got a 4-pack of the Eighth Mill maple ale to go!

This was an unexpected surprise while visiting the Old Greensborough part of town. After enjoying a Guinness and a Smithwicks at the Irish pub across the street, we stumbled upon this brewery that hadn’t shown up on any of or previous Google searches. The have a pretty decent menu of beers so we tried the Nathanael’s Lite lager and the Oktoberface Festbier and weren’t disappointed!

Our last stop for the weekend brings us to a brewery that reflects our lifestyle of traveling around with everything we own packed up in a “camper”. We pulled into the parking lot just outside of town and saw a sign reading Live Music and Parking In The Rear. Upon arrival, we found a band playing bluegrass music on stage and birthday balloons floating above a group of tables outside. A banjo, a ukulele and a fiddle pickin’ out some pretty decent tunes that would make even Grandma Mitchell get up and dance. We sat and enjoyed two of only three of their beers; Lawnmower Light lager and Festbier golden lager.